17 feb. 2011

More Dogma

Dogma cannot be disputed; it admits no argument. If a dogma is replaced by a new, contradictory dogma, then there is no argument for the change: there is simply a new party line that must be adhered to. The justification for dogma is sheer institutional authority. Because some official body (a church, a political party) says so.

Justifications for dogma always come after the fact, they are apologetics aimed to justify whatever the dogma happens to be at the moment. Apologetics are always in bad faith.

I have no authority per se. If I put forward my opinion, I have to back it up with my own reasons. My own colleagues do not agree with me, often. By definition, I cannot be dogmatic. I resent the use of the term to refer to someone with strong, well-justified opinions, who does in fact change his opinions with some frequency.

I've never imposed my agenda on a dissertation student. One wrote sympathetically on a poet whom I had criticized. All I told her to do was to at least acknowledge the debate to which I had contributed. When I review an article, I almost never let a point of substantive disagreement lead me to reject it. The exception is when I feel the writer has misrepresented the terms of the debate.

In class, I don't really care whether a student agrees with me. The problem tends to be with students willing to believe everything I say. That's frightening.

Páginas

Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."